But is Cleveland really jinxed or is that something that we Clevelanders just tell ourselves to make it all seem a little more romantic? Seen another way, the Indians did put together one of the great hitting teams in baseball history and got to a couple of World Series in the 1990s. LeBron James has twice taken the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals — once when he was just a kid and once more after he returned home. Even the perpetually doomed Browns have been to three championship games, something that Detroit Lions fans would take in a heartbeat. They all just fell short.

And the bad teams? Were they really jinxed? Take this Browns team. They’re bad. But jinxed? Sunday seemed a good day to find out.

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Joe Posnanski writes about sports for a living, particularly baseball. Here, he writes about sports and also Springsteen, Hamilton, Harry Potter, iPads, infomercials, his idolization of Duane Kuiper, his family and magic. He lives in Charlotte with his wife Margo, two daughters Elizabeth and Katie, and their dog Westley. Joe is currently working on a book about Harry Houdini in today’s world.

Joe seems to think that the Browns are not jinxed because a lot of their failures can be attributed to bad decisions. Fari enough and I agree. But the question is whether Cleveland is jinxed. And at the city level, Cleveland is junxed by universally and perpetually having inept ownership and management.

Losing because you were off-side on a game winning missed field goal is kind of a summation of the Browns. You have to be both undisciplined and jinxed to pull that off. Not to mention kind of stupid. The outside rush man on a short field goal has almost no chance of blocking a kick unless there is a serious bobble on the snap/holder exchange. In the NFL, those exchanges are well practiced by players who are specialists. They make that exchange flawlessly 99% of the time. The field goal block almost has to come from inside, and that’s difficult too on a short kick when the kicker can easily afford a high trajectory, unlike longer kicks. Figure in an overall average of 5% misses from that range and a much smaller chance of blocking the kick from the wing, and the guy who was off-side really needs to learn him some football.